Are small CIWS any good?

[Charles]

I am trying to make a small CIWS turret, but every time I do they just seem plain bad in comparison to other options. I want them to be relatively small but it seems they need to be as big as a main gun to really do anything. I want a way to reliably kill off large cram shells without sucking up a ton of juice from my lams. I really want CIWS to be good, but they just seem really bad at killing anything other than my available deck space. If anyone has any tips on how to make them effective I would love to hear it. I am starting to think the best option is to use them as decorative items that aren't really supposed to do anything. If someone has had good luck with them I would love to hear how to build them.

[The man, the myth, the leg]

yeah they are pretty good
the warhead you use is very important
from what i know for small CIWS you should generally use solid shells(heat apparently also works)
explosive and flak need to be bigger to be effective

[SteelDoubloon01]

I don’t know what you mean by small, so I’d assume 5x5 footprint.

If you use simple kinetic shells like Armour piece and solid body, 2 gunpowder and use it in a belt fed autoloader. You can give decent damage but you must make sure shots are accurate by using long barrels, lightweight barrels so they can move faster, faster shells so that the time taken to target is low or tracer bases.

Like the other guy said, kinetic will be good as the damage per size is quite good, just ensure they hit.

Also, don’t expect one gun to keep up with many missiles, you may need to scatter a few around the ship to counter larger salvos.

You could also use missiles on a winch that have a radar or thermal buoy to lure missiles off the ship, which may make it easier to hit and shoot down.

I’d also recommend setting restrictions on turret block movement so they can’t aim at your deck.

Finally, you should look at missiles health and armour, as well as detection distance.

The damage multiplier is armour pierce divided by armour of block being hit.

So if a missiles has 20 armour, 1000 health, a 2000 damage kinetic shell with 10 ap would do 10/20 * 2000= 1000 damage and destroy the missile.

Then if you have 10 missiles being shot, with a detection distance 400m, a speed 200m/s. The time to kill is less than 2 seconds. Therefore you need to shoot 10 shells in less than 2 seconds. Or 300rpm in this case.

Now, shooting a large kinetic shell that does 2000 damage at a speed of 300rpm would require a ‘large’ gun.

But you should be able to figure it out properly in the designer. (Also, make sure to account for misses, so you may need triple the shells; so 900rpm for example)

[Dakota]

CIWS is pretty terrible vs crams, you can get away with using it against some early tier campaign craft, but anything using a cram semi seriously will go right through with extreme ease. CIWS is a dps weapon but most incoming damage comes in large bursts, this leaves CIWS's role mostly being defense against small missile spam via flak rounds, which it is pretty effective in that role for a given cost and size.

Also yeah, CIWS tend to be the size of main guns and often more expensive than main guns to be effective against anything past light small to medium missile spam.

[Perro Grande]

I am a total noob, I usually just use those 200 resource premade machine guns as my CIWS but I don't think they are strong enough to handle CRAMs they good against small and med missiles tho.

[The man, the myth, the leg]

for crams your best bet is probably LAMS

[SteelDoubloon01]

Oh sorry, CIWS is fun for missiles but pretty bad for Cram, well unless you really over engineer it, but the material cost will cheaper by adding extra engines and lams.

You could always use both CIWS and lams.

[The man, the myth, the leg]

also how big vehicle are you planning to have
for smaller vehicles(sub 50k) active defenses generally arent that important, since a decent anti munition system would be too expensive. smaller vehicles generally rely on being hard to hit, which is especially useful against CRAMs
combining diffrent anti munition systems is also very useful
missile interceptors and CIWS remove missiles that would otherwise overwhelm LAMS

[Charles]

Thanks for all the advice. The craft i'm building is probably going to be around the 1m mark. I was looking for a CIWS that uses a 1m clip and can be buried in the superstructure. I plan on having lams and some small interceptor missiles. It can eat up mostly anything thrown at it. But I have noticed that a lot of really large cram shells tend to drain it more than I would like. The missiles don't work all that well at stopping crams either. I am hoping to find a way to deal with crams so I can save some of that lams energy. Does anyone have any ideas for CIWS shells that could do that? Or if there is a better option that would be great too. I kinda like the idea of CIWS but they don't seem very effective against anything but missiles, and the interceptors are cheaper and better at that role.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Charles:

Thanks for all the advice. The craft i'm building is probably going to be around the 1m mark. I was looking for a CIWS that uses a 1m clip and can be buried in the superstructure. I plan on having lams and some small interceptor missiles. It can eat up mostly anything thrown at it. But I have noticed that a lot of really large cram shells tend to drain it more than I would like. The missiles don't work all that well at stopping crams either. I am hoping to find a way to deal with crams so I can save some of that lams energy. Does anyone have any ideas for CIWS shells that could do that? Or if there is a better option that would be great too. I kinda like the idea of CIWS but they don't seem very effective against anything but missiles, and the interceptors are cheaper and better at that role.

If you're doing anti cram CIWS you'd need high burst damage CIWS, which gets into the somewhat more complex range that people don't talk about much outside of the meta. You got a few options ranging from high capacity multiple round burst CIWS that uses railgun storage enough to fire multiple shells at low velocity usually with flak to then dump like 40 rounds a second in bursts as required, which also means you need that many loaders too. Alternatively using something like direct input 10m long 500mm flak shells fired from "flak tubes" mounted on your ship that fire at last moment against incoming shells that get past other defenses to put in large burst damage in the 30k+ damage per shot range but with reload times that are also long to go with the reloads of the enemy, 8m long 500mm using proper loaders instead of just direct input can potentially work better in this role if you need more rate of fire incase enemy reloads volleys too fast.

[Charles]

Originally posted by Dakota:

If you're doing anti cram CIWS you'd need high burst damage CIWS, which gets into the somewhat more complex range that people don't talk about much outside of the meta. You got a few options ranging from high capacity multiple round burst CIWS that uses railgun storage enough to fire multiple shells at low velocity usually with flak to then dump like 40 rounds a second in bursts as required, which also means you need that many loaders too. Alternatively using something like direct input 10m long 500mm flak shells fired from "flak tubes" mounted on your ship that fire at last moment against incoming shells that get past other defenses to put in large burst damage in the 30k+ damage per shot range but with reload times that are also long to go with the reloads of the enemy, 8m long 500mm using proper loaders instead of just direct input can potentially work better in this role if you need more rate of fire incase enemy reloads volleys too fast.

Okay, that is actually making a lot of sense. I might try that! If it gets too costly I might just make the lams bigger. Thanks!

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Charles:

Originally posted by Dakota:

If you're doing anti cram CIWS you'd need high burst damage CIWS, which gets into the somewhat more complex range that people don't talk about much outside of the meta. You got a few options ranging from high capacity multiple round burst CIWS that uses railgun storage enough to fire multiple shells at low velocity usually with flak to then dump like 40 rounds a second in bursts as required, which also means you need that many loaders too. Alternatively using something like direct input 10m long 500mm flak shells fired from "flak tubes" mounted on your ship that fire at last moment against incoming shells that get past other defenses to put in large burst damage in the 30k+ damage per shot range but with reload times that are also long to go with the reloads of the enemy, 8m long 500mm using proper loaders instead of just direct input can potentially work better in this role if you need more rate of fire incase enemy reloads volleys too fast.

Okay, that is actually making a lot of sense. I might try that! If it gets too costly I might just make the lams bigger. Thanks!

You're welcome.

[Rufus Shinra]

Originally posted by The man, the myth, the leg:

combining diffrent anti munition systems is also very useful
missile interceptors and CIWS remove missiles that would otherwise overwhelm LAMS

Amen. My main combat ship (missile frigate) combines different layers of active and passive defences to utterly no-sell the biggest missile salvoes Steel Striders can throw. Good decoys, large multifunction gun for continuous damage on the missile salvo, layer of medium-range interceptors, then a pair of CIWS each sufficient to negate all the CRAM the Onyx Watch can send. With a pair of CIWS, you can turn CRAM into a non-menace entirely. For missiles, if you want to remain cost-effective, which is THE most important thing in design (since any noob can pile up more and more stuff to outspend the opposition), then learning how to use deciys effectively is a must.

[Charles]

Originally posted by Rufus Shinra:

then a pair of CIWS each sufficient to negate all the CRAM the Onyx Watch can send. With a pair of CIWS, you can turn CRAM into a non-menace entirely.

I would love to hear more about these CIWS! Caliber, shell composition, rail draw, gun size. You know, everything I would need to know to replicate it and hopefully learn how the heck to build a good CIWS.

[The man, the myth, the leg]

another option could ba laser CIWS
it would have better range than LAMS and you could easily attach it to your existing laser array, just give it a min laser restriction to save some lasers for LAMS

[Rufus Shinra]

Originally posted by Charles:

Originally posted by Rufus Shinra:

then a pair of CIWS each sufficient to negate all the CRAM the Onyx Watch can send. With a pair of CIWS, you can turn CRAM into a non-menace entirely.

I would love to hear more about these CIWS! Caliber, shell composition, rail draw, gun size. You know, everything I would need to know to replicate it and hopefully learn how the heck to build a good CIWS.

Each of these is worth 45k mats, so they are very much overengineered for threats smaller than the Black Current. The ship they're protecting is 800k-1M range in cost and designed to outfight pretty much anything short of the biggest Scarlet Dawn flyers with a major restriction: no futuristic energy weapons whatsoever (no laser, no PAC, no railgun). These CIWS themselves were calibrated to stop a saturation attack of 20-40 fast suicide nuke cruise missiles, which is very much NOT a regular threat either, but fitting the theme of the real world modern FFG/DDG.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1923617670559422304/5F4BF1B1DD5D2B060D8CA49344F05FCB6AD33609/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1923617670559422532/2850EEBDA2FC1CF4EB4634F63A294357C4417284/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

So, not exactly "small", except in calibre: 50 mm with 20 component shells, 90 % are 17 gunpowder, one AP, one solid, one fin, 10 % are 17 gunpowder, one tracer, one fin. A sandblaster gun.